The wind energy production tax credit (PTC) has become a key wedge issue in the 2012 presidential campaign - especially in Iowa, the No. 1 state in the U.S. for wind energy jobs and No. 2 in the nation in installed wind power capacity.

Until now, both President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have been clear about their polar-opposite positions on the PTC.

Obama has made the tax credit one of the cornerstones of his campaign in states like Iowa and Colorado, both of which have an established wind energy supply chain and depend heavily on the PTC to keep thousands of wind jobs. In fact, Obama even made the passage of a PTC extension part of Congress’ to-do list - a task it has so far failed to accomplish.

Meanwhile, Romney said in July that he was in favor of letting the wind energy PTC expire at the end of this year. When speaking in Iowa at a campaign event last week, however, Romney suggested that he would support a phase-out of the wind energy PTC.

“We will support nuclear and renewables but phase out subsidies once an industry is on its feet,” Romney said last Friday.

A PTC phase-out has gained traction as a possible bipartisan compromise and has been supported by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, who is also leading the efforts to push through an omnibus tax-extenders bill that contains a one-year PTC extension.

However, Romney’s comment is in stark contrast from what was stated on his website back in July: “We should not be in the business of steering investment toward particular politically favored approaches,” his official position on energy read. “That is a recipe for both time and money wasted on projects that do not bring us dividends. The failure of wind mills and solar plants to become economically viable or make a significant contribution to our energy supply is a prime example.”

Those statements have been removed from Romney’s website; however, there are still no references to the PTC. The sole mention of wind energy comes in the following statement: “Companies like Solyndra have gone bankrupt, and the wind industry has shed 10,000 jobs.”

Many of those “shed jobs” have come in Iowa: Siemens and Clipper Windpower are just two examples of companies that have recently announced layoffs in Iowa due to the lack of a PTC extension.